Pierre Gasly turned Charles Leclerc’s friendly Monza advice into the first Formula 1 pole position of his career. The Alpine driver set a 1:21.786 at qualifying for the 2026 Italian Grand Prix today, beating George Russell by 0.060 seconds and putting an unexpected blue car at the front of the grid.

Leclerc, who qualified fourth for Ferrari, had spent part of Friday’s drivers’ briefing discussing Turns 6 and 7 with Gasly. The advice was harmless enough. Then Gasly produced the lap of his life, and Leclerc apparently decided his generosity needed a small review.

Gasly Turned Friendly Advice Into Pole

“I’m very happy for Pierre. Yesterday, we were talking at the briefing and he was asking me a bit about things for Turns 6 and 7. And I was like: ‘Come on, with Pierre, normally, we don’t fight each other too much.’ So we always share a few little things,” Leclerc admitted.

Following the qualifying session, the Monegasque approached Gasly to laugh about it.

“And today, when I saw that he had taken pole, I went, ‘shit!’ So that’s what I told him straight away when I went to see him in the car.”

Monza means a lot to Gasly, who has been fighting for a pole position for a long time. Gasly won his first F1 race at the circuit in 2020, driving for AlphaTauri, but had never previously started a Grand Prix from pole. This time, his Alpine beat Russell’s Mercedes, while Leclerc’s Ferrari stopped the clock at 1:22.004, 0.218 seconds off pole. Lewis Hamilton was fifth in the other Ferrari with a 1:22.011, and fewer than 0.200 seconds separated the entire top 10 in Q3.

Leclerc gave Gasly and Alpine full credit.

“But I’m super happy for Pierre, he deserves it, he’s an extremely good driver and today, on the lap where everything had to be put together and where they had to optimise the maximum from the package, they just did the perfect job. And with these cars, that pays off,” Leclerc said.

“They clearly don’t have the best car on the grid, but when you do everything perfectly, it adds up with these cars and it makes a much bigger difference than in the past. So it’s cool, in any case, to see him on pole position. Very happy for him.”

Gasly’s final Q3 run also benefited from Hamilton’s slipstream. Mercedes had arranged a tow from Kimi Antonelli for Russell, making Monza’s usual qualifying choreography particularly important.

Ferrari’s Upgrade Couldn’t Fix Its Energy Problems

Ferrari arrived at its home race with an upgraded engine, yet Leclerc said the team left qualifying knowing it had failed to extract everything available. The challenges extended beyond just acceleration on the straights. During the session, managing energy proved to be problematic.

“I mean, it’s always disappointing to be P4, but it’s also true that we expected a significant gap coming here,” he said. “On ourselves, we have been far from perfect during this qualifying. We’ve had quite a lot of issues in the background. It’s a very demanding and difficult track to optimize everything power unit wise with driving here in Monza, but I think we’ve been too suboptimal and eventually we paid the price for it.

“It was more related to the energy management and this is something we’ll have to look because we didn’t have any of those issues coming before qualifying, and so to start dealing with them during qualifying is not ideal.”

How does he think he’ll fare tomorrow?

“I expect us to be stronger, but it’s also true that in the straights we are going to struggle tomorrow and we are going to be quite exposed to the others, but we are fast in corners, so I hope that this helps us to stay with them.

“I think the yo-yo racing will be a thing tomorrow, apart from if we all align magically on the same strategy, which I doubt because there are some physical limits that we cannot… I mean, they are powering through one more straight. There are straights that we need to choose where we don’t just put the power, but Mercedes is powering in the straights where we cannot put power. So there will by default be a big difference in some straights. Let’s see if we can find any miracle by surprising them at any other points.”

Leclerc believes a win is still in the books for the Scuderia.

“Winning is still a target. It’s going to be tough surely, but I think the pace is not out of the world. It’s just to see how exposed we will be in the straights. Do you think that Pierre’s pole position is more about execution? Surely. I mean, as we’ve said many times, I think with these cars, as soon as you are a bit out of the optimal window of the power unit, you can lose so much, and the contrary is also true. When you are doing everything perfect, you can make a big difference, and I think Alpine and Pierre with the driving did everything perfect today.”